


Waking Up

by betp



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Crack, Derek is unhappy, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:59:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betp/pseuds/betp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek has an out-of-body experience and no one cares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking Up

**Author's Note:**

> Set a few years in the future.

Waking up dead is unnerving.

On a scale of waking up in bed with a stuffed animal he didn't think he owned to waking up in a drained pool tied up with his own clothes and surrounded by men with guns, Derek figures this ranks about… an eleven.

He stands over his own body. Watches himself bleed out. Reckons, if he's having an out-of-body experience, odds are pretty good he can't heal from this one.

Considering how many hours he spent running for his life and bewildered about why he was doing it, what a high percentage of his free time was consumed with wishing wildly that he'd never been born, that it was easier for a werewolf to die, it's kind of weird that he isn't particularly pleased about this new turn of events.

His face—his body's face—looks forlorn. Desperate.

Derek always knew, though. However he would die, he always knew he would do it alone.

::

Takes about an hour for Isaac to stumble over him—literally. He's fuzzy, messed up on wolfs bane dust. Wanders blearily from the shadows, where Derek presumes he passed out before the hunters got him.

It's stupid, really. Advanced healing, impressive speed, the ability to _smell movement_. The only things Derek can't heal quickly from are wolfs bane, silver, and electrocution. And _what_ did him in? A hunter gutted him with a rusty pipe. _Very cool, Der_ , Laura would say.

Isaac chokes on his own gag reflex at the sight of Derek's slowly expanding pool of blood, his belly torn open. Derek wonders if he's thoroughly dead yet. Isaac whimpers, "Derek?" Crouches close, trembling. "Derek, are you—?"

He must be alive, because Isaac whips out his phone next. "Scott?" he says into the phone. "I need—I don't know what I need. Derek, he's. Just, come. Please."

::

Scott brings Allison—which: of _course_ he does—and Jackson.

Derek wishes he'd just fucking kick the bucket already. Doesn't want to see their unconcerned faces.

He looks anyway.

"Oh, that's disgusting," Jackson gags.

"What happened?" Allison inquires, morbidly curious.

"Hunters got him," Isaac says, and he at least seems to have the heart to sound upset about it. "I didn't see, I—but I didn't think I should bring him to the hospital, not if—"

"They might figure him out," Scott says, "but _I_ dunno. How _else_ can we help him?" He looks put out, probably because his mother is working tonight and he won't know how to explain this to her. He reaches out to touch warm fingertips to Derek's body's jaw, and Derek, standing a foot and a half away, flinches back.

"You could at least try to sound a little concerned," he tells them, teeth grit, and no one hears him.

::

"It's okay, Isaac," Allison says gently. Puts a hand, firm and warm, on Isaac's knee, reaching from the front seat to the back. Isaac looks up from Derek's body's face to blink at her. "It's just Derek," Allison soothes.

::

Lydia looks down at Derek's face in the hospital. "Is he dying?" she asks.

Jackson ignores her. He is looking at his phone.

"We don't know," says the nurse with the curly hair. Scott's mother. The one Uncle Peter has a thing for. He was right, she's gorgeous. "We've stitched him up. He seems to be fine. But he won't wake up."

Lydia looks sad and ill as she looks back at Derek. Derek looks, too. He can't quite summon any more emotion than she can. "C'mon, Jackson," Lydia says, pulling her car keys out of her purse. "Wanna get to the movie place before it closes."

::

The heart monitor keeps faltering. Derek watches the line go flat for seconds at a time. No one notices.

::

He wanders the halls and swears at people. Rants and raves. No one notices.

::

He sobs wretchedly and claws at his ghostly face. Thankfully, no one notices.

::

Derek spends an inordinate amount of time away from his worthless body. He can't stray far, but he goes into other rooms and insults people. It's cathartic. But futile. He's just drifted back into his room to insult himself when he hears a belligerent voice in the hall. "—been a _week_ and you couldn't have _mentioned_ it? Just in _passing_? Oh, hey, by the way, Derek _Hale_ might be _dead_??"

He recognizes the voice, it's— " _Stiles_ , calm down, I—I didn't think you'd _want_ to—"

"Calm _down_? You didn't think I'd _want to know_? Yeah, it's not like he's saved my _life_ before or anything. Not like I almost had to chop off his stupid _arm_ ," Stiles is almost yelling at he barrels into the hospital room, "not like he's the only werewolf in town who can—" and stops short just inside the door, so abruptly that Scott crashes into the back of him like a cartoon character. "— _je_ sus," he breathes.

Stiles creeps close to the bed, quickly, but silently. Like he's tiptoeing. "Dude," Scott says, one hand reached ineptly out from the doorframe. He doesn't come in; he glances helplessly into the hallway.

"Not like you're gonna wake me up," Derek croaks. He shudders when Stiles puts a hand on Derek's lifeless body's face. Like when Scott touched him, it sends a weird shock through Derek's system, like he might faint. If he weren't a disembodied soul or something.

Stiles isn't as gentle as Scott was. He sits on the edge of the bed. "Dude," Scott says. Stiles ignores him. He takes Derek's face in his hands, tips his face back and forth between his palms. "Dude," says Scott again.

"Stop," Derek says desperately.

"You could punch him again," Scott offers, going for levity, and Stiles smirks. But it fades quickly.

"What happened to him?" Stiles asks.

"Hunters," Scott replies. "Stabbed him with a pipe. He _should_ be _fine_ now, though." Stiles looks back at Scott, curiously. "Mom says she doesn't know why he's still out."

"Yeah? Maybe there's no _point_ waking up," Derek spits. He was facing them a second ago, across his own body; but now he's on the other side of the room, standing in the corner.

"The hunters left town after," Scott says sheepishly. "That's why I didn't say anything. I didn't know you…"

Stiles turns away from Scott and rolls his eyes at Derek's body. He grips Derek's jaw and gives his head a short shake.

Then he stands and lets his backpack slip off his shoulder. He falls into a chair with a _thwump_ and starts hauling his laptop out. It takes until he's bent over looking under the chair for an outlet for him to notice Scott's perplexed face. " _What_?" he says defensively. Scott's expression adjusts to judgment. "Shut up. Like I'd be doing anything different anywhere else. Is there wifi? What's the password?"

"The wifi is free."

"Scott, I _know_ the staff doesn't use the shitty public wifi, don't bullshit me. _What_ is the _password_."

::

Stiles is there almost every day from then on.

Scott shows up occasionally himself, more often than Derek thought he would. He'll come in, leave Derek some ugly _get well_ card with kittens on it, give him a brief update on whatever it is they're doing. Stiles, however, arrives with the clear intentions of _camping out_. He brings his computer, brings his books, brings a sandwich. Scott calls him the third day Stiles visits. It is a call Derek would be able to hear even if he wasn't sprawled in the seat next to Stiles, drawn to his unique warmth. "The hunters that got Derek are back," Scott tells him, "to make sure he's down for the count."

Stiles pulls his string of licorice out of his mouth and says, "You guys should all wear black and, like, stand around crying. Have a Derek memorial. Have a _wake_." He smirks, pleased by his own suggestion. "Maybe if they see you mourning, they'll think he's dead."

"They're not _stupid_ , Stiles," Scott sighs, but he doesn't say he won't try it.

Stiles laughs when he hangs up. "Like your pack didn't already start wearing black and shit once they started hanging out with you," he directs at Derek's flaccid body in the hospital bed.

"You can't hold me responsible for their wardrobe, Stiles," Derek mutters irritably, and for a split second, he thinks Stiles looks right at him. Not at his body, but _at him_. But he was probably just looking at the clock.

::

Stiles gets a phone call from Lydia at the end of the week. "Stiles," she says sharply, "where are you?"

"I'm at the," he says, but "At the hospital with Derek," she finishes for him, irritated.

"How'd you guess!" Stiles quips, faux-cheerful.

"You've only been there practically every day since you found out about him. Have you even been going to school?"

"My classes are all online," Stiles says. "The wifi's slow, but I've had slower."

"O _kay_ ," she says. Stiles doesn't go on. She says, "You need fresh air. Sunlight?" She's on the phone, so she can't possibly appreciate when Stiles rolls his eyes expressively. She tries, "Why don't you come to the mall with us for a while?"

Stiles frowns.

"Go to the mall with Lydia," Derek says loudly from the corner. "Go. I know how you feel about her." Stiles blows out a breath. He slides down in the chair, feet sticking out, and gloomily considers Derek's body in the bed. 

"He's not going anywhere," Lydia adds.

"See?" says Derek, pointlessly. "I'm still gonna be a lifeless heap of bones, Stiles, just go." Stiles twitches.

"What if he wakes up?" Stiles asks Lydia thoughtfully. "It would suck if he did and he was all alone. Wouldn't that suck?"

" _Stiles_ ," Derek says.

Lydia sighs, long and heavy. "I don't know," she says almost petulantly. "I guess?"

"It would _suck_ ," Stiles assures her. "Trust me."

Derek's heart monitor blips.

"Anyway, sorry, there, Derek," says Stiles when he and Lydia finish their call. He sits back up and leans in to condescendingly pat Derek's ankle. Derek sighs irritably. "All right. Where was I." Stiles fumbles messily with the book in his lap. "Right, here." He clears his throat. " _I felt Edward cringe. I glanced up at him, and his face was contorted in what could only be pain._ " He giggles to himself. "It could be something else, Bella. He _is_ perpetually seventeen. Keep an open mind, okay."

::

"I downloaded a piano onto my laptop," Stiles announces to Derek halfway through his third week in the hospital. Derek is sitting on top of his corpse. He snorts.

"How do you download a piano," he asks derisively.

"Check this out," Stiles says instead of answering, because he can't hear him. He starts clicking, and tinny, electronic piano notes fall out of his laptop like intangible boxes of cereal. "Derek wake up," Stiles sings, off-key and tuneless. "Wake up Derek, hurry up asshole, wake up now."

"That's beautiful, Stiles," says Nurse McCall, coming in to check up on Derek's useless cadaver, and Stiles blushes violently, splotchy and embarrassed. "Why didn't you go into music school?"

"Could've gone to Julliard with these skills," Stiles tells her, feigning confidence. "But it was too far away, you see."

Smirking, she leaves the room.

"Fucker," Stiles directs halfheartedly back at Derek. "Wish you coulda warned me."

There's a long pause wherein Stiles pouts uncomfortably, hunching over in his seat, and Derek watches, amused by the way he sticks his lower lip out, the way he has patches of vibrant pink on his cheeks, like someone pinched his face. His lashes bleed down into his cheeks where he's looking down. He sighs, blowing his bangs up, and Derek realizes he doesn't clip all his hair off anymore. He's sure it's been years since Stiles made that particular change, and he's sure he noticed before; but it really becomes _real_ suddenly. It sinks in.

"Not that you _would_ have if you _could_ ," Stiles adds. _Shit_ , Derek thinks, _he's onto me_. And what does that imply? When you realize you've been sitting on top of your own stringless marionette, admiring a kid you never used to think twice about, examining him to the point where you notice if he's changed the way he wears his hair. When you realize he _knows_ you. What does that mean about you? And him?

If Derek weren't little more than an imaginary balloon with the string tied to a rock, he might be blushing, himself.

But then Stiles starts sulkily tapping at the higher keys on his laptop piano. "Wake up asshole," he sings softly.

::

Derek can't sleep, so he can't dream, really.

But at night, when all the lights are off and the hospital is mostly quiet aside from the twitching beeps and whirrs of various electronics, and Derek can't leave, what else is he to do? He's surpassed his rage and his depression, moved on from attempting to bargain with the nothingness that Laura always said was God, accepted the fact that no one, not even fellow coma patients, will be able to hear him.

So he sort of _exists_ in this transient state. He sort of—just _is_. He drifts, mentally, to this place where he can't quite see. There's this expanding, impossibly bright glow. Like when your eyes are dilated and you look right at your phone screen or something, this unseeable, painful light. And he tries to get closer, tries to get his eyes adjusted so he can see it properly, since there's something _in_ the light, something he wants to _see_. It calls to him.

But he _can't_. No matter how hard he tries, he can't.

He falls back to life, back to Earth, back to the hospital, with the beeps and the whirrs and the squeak of clean shoes on tiled floors and the overwhelming scent of antiseptic and blood and _home_ , Derek can't place where the _home_ came from until he looks to the chairs next to the hospital bed and finds Stiles, laying across them, neck at an uncomfortable angle, squirming and mumbling in his sleep. Using Derek's jacket as a blanket.

::

The alphas come back in the fourth week and try to usurp Derek's questionable place in Beacon Hills, but their attack is halfhearted at best and the pack holds their own. Stiles and Lydia end up in the hospital for their own injuries, and then sit in Derek's room so Stiles can tell Derek about it.

When he finishes, Lydia sighs. "You know he isn't going to remember anything you tell him when he wakes up."

"She has a point, Stiles," Derek deadpans from between them, where he is wedged tightly because he got tired of sitting in his own lap. "I probably can't even hear you right now."

She adds, "He probably can't even hear you right now." Derek chuckles to himself.

Stiles shrugs, unconcerned. "Maybe his soul hears it," he says flippantly. "I'd rather say things to him and have it mean nothing than not say anything when he's listening for it."

Sighing, Lydia joins Stiles in watching Derek's pointless body breathe.

"You're listening, right, big guy?" Stiles asks Derek's body, grinning slantedly and lightly punching Derek's knee. Derek rolls his incorporeal eyes.

::

Stiles starts occasionally taking naps in bed with Derek's sleeping physical mass. He'll start nodding off while he types on his laptop—Derek's snuck over and looked a few times: sometimes he's writing essays, and other times he's picking fights with strangers in Youtube comments—and then he'll shut the laptop and climb up onto the bed. He never gets under the blankets. There's only enough room for him to wedge himself in on his side, so he has to choose between getting unsatisfactorily spooned by Derek's arm, or clinging to Derek's body. The choice is almost always the same.

Derek hovers close, both mystified and deeply warmed. He can feel Stiles' touch seeping through nothing and onto his oneiric skin. Nurse McCall pokes her head in and directs an equally bewildered grin at Stiles, fully clothed and cuddling with a sleeping werewolf. Oddly enough, she doesn't wake him. Just gently shuts the door.

::

"Stiles," Derek says the next time the hospital bed contains two sleeping bodies. "Stiles, this is ridiculous. Wake up."

Stiles frowns, disgruntled, in his sleep. Makes a low sound.

" _Stiles_ ," Derek snaps.

"Der'k?" Stiles mumbles, still asleep.

Derek's breath catches. He gapes for a moment, and then moves ever closer. "Stiles? Can you hear me?"

Stiles twists his face into Derek's chest. "Mmyeah," he answers. "Miss you. Scott's th'train. You com'n back?"

"I—" Derek swallows. He crosses his arms across his middle—his fake arms, across his fake middle. "I don't know how," he confesses. Stiles hums, low and judgmental. "Shut up. Stiles, tell me something."

" _Tell_ you," Stiles repeats muzzily.

Finally. Finally Derek has the chance to ask what he's been wondering for weeks. He begs, "Why are you _here_?"

Stiles rolls his face away from Derek's chest. He says, "Why d'you _think_."

Before Derek can parse out what that might mean, Stiles starts to move, sluggishly, like molasses. "No, wait, please," but he's blinking, stretching. He sits up and peers about groggily, frowning and expectant. Then he slumps onto his elbows and looks at Derek. He reaches over, taps Derek's unconscious face with his knuckles. Then he pinches his nose. "Jesus, this again," Derek sighs miserably.

"I think I dreamed about you," Stiles says to Derek's body, his voice rough with sleep. He relinquishes Derek's nose.

Someone walking down the hall leisurely pushes a rolling cart past the door. The sound of wheels rumbling on the tile slowly gets softer and softer until they can't hear it anymore.

"Please wake up," Stiles says vulnerably. Then he looks around again, self-conscious. "C'mon, Sleeping Beauty," he adds, trying to mask his openness with humor. But the desperation is showing through, raw on the edges, like the rubber casing's been chewed away on a wire. He's sitting up again, and he pushes at Derek, once, with his palm. "Just—what do you _need_?" Words crackling. "A kiss? Is that what you're waiting for, true love's first kiss or something?"

"Try it," Derek says to him. "Kiss me, hit me. Cut me, I don't _care_."

"I wonder how pissed off you'd be," Stiles muses. Presses the pad of his thumb against Derek's lower lip. Derek-the-ghost feels his invisible face burn hot, his ears. He can feel the ghost pressure on his lip. "If I…"

"Oh," Derek says, mortified and dismayed. Stiles' thumb slips off his lip, and Derek flinches a little. The intense attention Stiles is giving him is making him feel claustrophobic suddenly. "Stiles," he says, "just _do_ it if you're gonna."

Stiles kisses him.

It hurts a lot.

::

Derek wakes up _violently_ , like he's jolting awake from a nightmare. He stares up at Stiles, still crammed onto the hospital bed with him. They gawk at each other for a long minute, shocked. Derek is breathing heavily.

"Ow," he says.

"Ow?" Stiles repeats dumbly, brow furrowed, eyes wide. "You're," Derek reaches up to clutch his head, wincing from the reeling waves of echoing pain, "You're awake."

"I'm," Derek says.

"You're awake!" Stiles' hands hover over Derek, like he wants to grab him, shake him around. He holds back, because Derek is fragile, apparently. "You're, I can't—you're _awake_! That, _that_ didn't—" Stiles is beaming. He rakes his hand through his hair, like he used to when it was buzzed off. Now it just leaves it sticking up on one side. He looks absurd. "How are you," he begins, but Derek hooks a hand behind Stiles' head, yanks him down and kisses him hard.

Humming, Stiles kisses back zealously. He bites Derek's lip sharp enough to draw blood.

::

No one is surprised by the latest turn of events except for Derek, Stiles, and Erica, who rages that all the guys she likes end up making out with each other (which no one is going to touch with a ten-foot pole).

::

No one can explain why Derek was separated from himself for a month and a half. Deaton shrugs, unconcerned. "He's fine now," he says.

::

Stiles takes his time mapping out Derek's body. Every inch of it. Their scents mingle and Derek's skin burns and prickles with Stiles' touch, his taste. Scott calls Stiles' phone three times, expecting each time for them to be finished, and they never are.

Stiles admires the scratches on his back in the bathroom mirror with overt self-satisfaction.

::

Stiles pauses in sucking a bruise into Derek's neck to say leisurely, "So you were just hanging around listening to everything?"

"There wasn't much to listen to," drawls Derek. "Mostly I heard the Twilight saga."

Stiles grins. Watches the bruise slowly shrink into Derek's skin. Like it's being swallowed, sucked into the depth of him. "Only one more chapter," he says, "and then we can get started on the movies."

"Jesus," Derek grumbles. Puts a hand on his face. "Why didn't I _die_."

"Because I wouldn't let you," Stiles says. Half knowing, half confirming.

"You wouldn't let me," agrees Derek after a moment.

It's a while before Stiles gets around to reading the last chapter.


End file.
